Essay Reflection

In my writing I demonstrate appropriate ideas and content through my quotes and explanations. For example, in my Alchemist essay, I put the quote “‘an army is coming’ said the boy, ‘I had a vision’” and then went on to explain the context and the significance of this quote. In my essay, where I put this quote I was using it as an example of why Santiago was an honest character. I think that to improve my writing I could have been more elaborate with my reasoning and covered more of the context for the quotes to further express my ideas in my writing. Throughout my essay, you can tell that I have appropriate organization because the format of my paragraphs is the same in each because I have the opening statement, quote, explanation, quote, explanation, sentence that leads to next paragraph. To demonstrate superior organization in my writing I think I could have been more specific with my ideas and really just kept it to one point. I think that I should have been more concise in what I was saying, and in some points I think I repeated myself a bit and to improve that I should have just said it, and not dwelled on it. I think I did improve with my essay from Alchemist to Julius Caesar because in Julius Caesar I felt like I was more detailed with what I said and I covered the criteria better. I think it showed, because in the Alchemist I had to re-do the essay to get a B, and in the Julius Caesar essay I got a B on the first time round. (: For my essay I think I used reason critically. I choose this because while constructing my Julius Caesar essay, I knew that we had to write it in class and not at home so I knew that I had to work on it at home in order to do better in class. So at home I wrote out what I thought was a good essay, and then I wrote notes on the planning sheet so that I knew what I was going to write about for the paragraphs. Also with both essays, I planned a lot and I had to reason critically to find the best quotes to support my main ideas in my essays.